Dev Update : 0.6.5 Release

The 0.6.5 version of GRA should be available somewhere between Sunday and Monday. I could release it right now, but I am tweaking the new dungeon and debugging a few errors I found adding this stuff. Anyway, here is what's going to happen in this release and the few next ones.

Dev Update : AI going rogue

I've let run the latest development build a whole day in the fastest "real-time" mode available. And here are the results. This post will also explain various major changes which are going to happen in the next versions.

Also, I know there's a few coders reading this blog, so I guess you'd love reading about this "new" path-finding algorithms (read it, seriously) which have the same advantages as the good old A* with a 10x speed factor. That's something I may give a try as my pathfinder algorithm is basically my biggest bottleneck in terms of performances. The second one is especially interesting given how easy it is to implement, but it can't manage a weight for each node (meaning that it's a no-go for GRA but others should find it very very useful). The first one could be a winner, but it requires way more changes in my current code. Don't forget to read the PDF linked by the article as they are the real stuff.

Anyway, let's talk about GRA !

Running, Tileset Editor, RAM consumption

0.4.0 tiles

The RAM consumption will be divided by at least 3, walk/run toggle implement, and new tiles and editor will be featured in next release. As I made some progress toward 0.4.0 today, I will detail here what's you can expect.

Grand Rogue Auto 0.3.5 Released !

Hi there,
 
No, I'm not dead ! Sorry for the lack of recent content, but when I have to choose between writing code and writing on the blog because of a busy IRL schedule, I usually choose coding. I will check the comments later, but for now, here is the 0.3.5 version of GRA. This is a very large update. A ton of improvements and bug-fixes have been included, large parts of the faction tree are in place, the GUI has been somewhat improved and a lot of the code behind the scene has been rewritten. Oh, and a basic savegame (sort of) system is in place too.

I'll details the additions and change in this article, and it's going to be a fairly long one.

EDIT: Download links updated. Sorry for the little delay.

Dev Update : Police, combat and stuff

So, as you can see in this screenshot, the police forces and a basic combat system have been implemented. Members of the police faction are now patrolling the streets and will chase the player if he does something illegal (like here, assaulting one of them with an automatic rifle). You can also notice in the game log that the combat and the general logging have improved.When selecting or changing your target, a quick description of the NPC is displayed. 

The following part of this article explains the changelog into more details.

NPC and Factions

First of all, happy X-Mas and happy new year (in case i don't come back until next year) to all of you!

Now, back to business. I'm mostly done with the NPC and the Faction editors. They are not linked to the game's NPC generator yet, but, well, details... The most boring part (from a coding point of view) is done on that matter anyway. Same as weapons and zones, NPC will be generated from the pool of available ones in the database. Faction handling will be a bit different. The civilian and the police factions will always be selected as they are necessary for the game engine. The generic gang faction will be used to generate a given amount of gangs based on the map's size.